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62d Congress ) QT?\rA^rv /Document 

2d Session \ SENATE j No< 616 



ADDRESS 



OF 



HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



DELIVERED 



AT BOSTON, MASS. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1912 










PRESENTED BY MR. REED 
April 29, 1912. — Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1912 



23 1019 



4> <» 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



PRINCIPLES, NOT PERSONALITIES, AT STAKE. 

My friends and fellow citizens, men and women of Massachusetts, 
men and women of Boston, I am glad indeed to be in your old historic 
State, your old historic city, this evening to plead for a cause which is 
preeminently the cause for which Massachusetts has stood throughout 
her existence as a colony and as a Commonwealth. [Cheers.] And 
friends — friends, I shall make my appeal to you in the name of every 
man and every principle for whom and for which Massachusetts has 
stood in the heroic days of the past. [Applause and cheers.] 

Now, friends, last night I felt obliged to answer at length the attacks 
made upon me by Mr. Taft, but I do not wish this contest to be put 
upon the basis of a contest of personalities [Good! good! and cheers] 
between myself and Mr. Taft, and to-night I shall only allude to Mr. 
Taft just as far as it is necessary for me in order to illustrate the prin- 
ciples for which he and I respectively stand. [Applause.] 

FIGHTING FOR EVERY GOOD CITIZEN. 

And those allusions I shall make right at the outset, so that I can 
get down to the part of my speech in which I shall strive, however 
feebly, to put before you the principles which I think are at stake in 
this contest. For mind you, friends, I hold that this is infinitely 
more than a mere faction fight in the Republican Party. [A voice: 
"That's where you're right."] I hold that this is infinitely more than 
any ordinary party contest, for I claim that we who stand for the 
principles of progressive Republicanism [applause and cheers] — that 
we who stand for making the principles of Abraham Lincoln living 
principles applied to the living issues of to-day — -I hold that we are 
fighting not only for every good Republican, but for every good citi- 
zen in the United States, whoever he may be. [Cheers.] 

And now at the outset, to dispose of the only matters that I have 
to take up in connection with Mr. Taft, I am more fortunate than Mr. 
Taft in my friends. [A voice: "You bet your life." Cheers.] 

WILLING TO LOSE WITH A GOOD MAN. 

When Mr. Taft came here on Thursday and I came here on Friday, 
Mr. Taft came here having lost the State of Illinois; I came here 
having lost the State of New Hampshire. [Laughter.] In Illinois 
Mr. Taft's chief lieutenant had been Mr. Lorimer. [Hisses.] In New 
Hampshire my chief supporter, chief lieutenant, had been Gov. Bass. 
[Great applause.] 

And Mr. Taft came here to explain that he didn't like Mr. Lorimer 
[laughter and applause], having kept his dislike strictly private and 

3 



4 ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

confidential [laughter] until Mr. Lorimer lost out in Illinois. 
[Laughter.] 

And I came here to say that, win or lose, I am with Gov. Bass every 
time, and that I count it the highest privilege to have had him as my 
champion, and I would rather lose with him than win with the forces 
allied against me. [Great applause and cries of "Bully."] 

FOUGHT LORIMER IN ILLINOIS. 

Now, just one more moment about Mr. Lorimer. 

I know his record well. Mr. Taft was originally, a year and a quar- 
ter ago, against Mr. Lorimer, and at that time he requested me not to 
assault Mr. Lorimer in public for fear it would help Mr. Lorimer. 
[Laughter.] 

And accordingly I kept quiet for several months, until I became 
convinced that the assault against Mr. Lorimer was going on with such 
excessive secrecy [laughter] that neither Mr. Lorimer nor any of his 
friends knew that there was an assault at all. [Laughter.] And then 
I took up the cudgels that I had dropped and I attacked Mr. Lorimer 
again. [Applause.] And I didn't attack him in Massachusetts after 
the Illinois primary; I attacked him in Illinois before the Illinois pri- 
mary. [Applause.] I was informed before I went there that I ought 
not to attack Mr. Lorimer because he had many friends, some of whom 
"intended to vote for me/' and that I would alienate their support. 
And I answered to them that I would rather lose every delegate in 
Illinois than by silence connive at the wickedness of which Mr. Lori- 
mer had been guilty. 

And I fought it out fair and square on that issue from one end of 
Illinois to the other. [A voice: "You did."] And I won. [Applause.] 

And I got every delegate in Illinois excepting two, the two from the 
district which Mr. Lorimer carries in his waistcoat pocket, and those 
two are for Mr. Taft. And, friends, it would not have been possible 
for me to have supported Mr. Lorimer at all — to have acquiesced in his 
support of me; but if it had been, and I had been going to repudiate 
him, I would have repudiated him before the Illinois primary and not 
afterwards. [Applause.] 

THE MAN FOR THE BOSSES. 

I have got a couple of columns arranged parallel here, one contain- 
ing a dozen of my representative supporters and the other containing 
the dozen foremost supporters of Mr. Taft. 

There has been a question raised by Mr. Taft as to whom the bosses 
were for. I will read you these two lists, and I will ask you to judge 
for yourselves. [A voice: "Exactly." Laughter.] I will read you — 
[pounding at entrance] — there seem to be some gentlemen who would 
like to come in. I will read you the dozen of my supporters first : Gov. 
Hadley, Gov. Bass, Gov. Stubbs, Gov. Johnson, Senator Beveridge, 
Senator Clark, Senator Bristow, Frank Heney, GifTord Pinchot, Mr. 
Garfield, Judge Ben Lindsey, Jacob Kiis. 

[A voice : ' 'How about Perkins ?"] 

Perkins ? He is for me. You can't — I will tell you. Wait a min- 
ute. You can't put a question to me that it will embarass me to 
answer for one moment. [Great applause. A voice: "Go to him! 
Go to him! "] 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 5 

RECORD IS OPEN TO ALL. 

Wait a moment. I know that kind well. And you can guarantee 
that any supporter of mine comes out in the open and supports me. 
[Applause.] And you can guarantee also that after he has supported 
me, and I have accepted his support, I won't repudiate him afterwards. 
[Great applause. A voice: "That is a square deal."] 

And finally, you can guarantee this, that you can search from the 
top to the bottom of my record in the past and of my record in the 
future and you will never find that I have done or am doing or ever 
shall do for Mr. Perkins or for any other human being [applause] — 
wait a minute — or for any other human being one thing that I wouldn't 
tell to this audience in its entire details. [A voice: "We believe it." 
Applause.] 

[Voices: l Tut him out."] Not a bit. I am glad to have him stay 
in. Don't put him out. [Applause.] 

HISSES ON THE BOSSES. 

And now I have given you the names of my supporters. Here are 
the names of a dozen representative supporters of Mr. Taft: Senator 
Lorimer [hisses], Senator Penrose [hisses], Senator Gallinger [hisses], 
Senator Guggenheim [hisses], Senator Aldrich [hisses], Senator Steph- 
enson [hisses], Mr. Kealing of Indiana [hisses], Mr. Barnes of New 
York [hisses], Mr. Cox of Ohio [hisses], Mr. Cannon [hisses], Mr. 
Ballinger [hisses], and finally, to balance Frank Heney in California, 
Mr. Patrick Calhoun [hisses], whom Frank Heney tried to put into 
the penitentiary.* 

Now, friends, Mr. Taft has said that I have accepted the support of 
bosses. So I have, when they went my way; but I never went their 
way. [Applause.] Either they had to go my way or we parted 
company. [Applause.] 

Understand me, friends, and make no thought of Mr. Taft. I 
think he means well, but he means feebly, and he is surrounded by 
men who are neither well meaning nor feeble. [Applause.] 

And now, friends, that is all I have got to say of the personalities 
in this contest. I have not been interested in them in any shape or 
way. I have no personal feeling whatever in the matter. I will 
support any man as long as that man renders service to the people 
of the United States. [Great applause and cheers.] And when he 
ceases rendering service I shall cease to support him. [Great 
applause.] 

APPEAL TO THE PATRIOTS. 

And now, friends, to you men and women of Massachusetts, I wish 
tp make as strong an appeal as I know how. I come from another 
State. I have no New England blood in me, but nine-tenths of the 
men in our nation's past to whom I have looked up most have been 
men of New England blood. [Cries of "Hear! Hear!" and applause.] 
And I ask Massachusetts now to stand as Massachusetts has ever 
stood, to stand in the van of the forward movement and not to be 
dragged reluctantly onward behind the other States that go forward. 
[Applause.] 



6 ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

Massachusetts stood by Abraham Lincoln. [Applause.] Massa- 
chusetts gave her mighty support to the rail splitter from Illinois 
when he announced as his cardinal doctrines the right of the people 
to rule, and their good sense which would so guide them as to bring 
nearer the day when social and industrial justice should prevail in 
this Republic of ours. [Applause.] 

THE REAL KIND OF FIGHT. 

And I ask Massachusetts to support us in this campaign, not 
because it is "easy, but because it is hard. [Applause.] I appeal to 
you because this is the only kind of a fight worth going into, the kind 
of fight where the victory is worth winning and where the struggle is 
difficult. 

Here in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, we have against us the enor- 
mous preponderance of the forces that win victory in ordinary political 
contests. [A voice: "They won't do it this time."] 

We have against us 95 per cent of the old regular political leaders. 
We have against us 95 per cent of the great corporations, which either 
legitimately fear that we would not tolerate their benefiting by privi- 
lege or else which are merely panic-struck and fail to realize that we 
will do absolute justice — just as much justice to the big man as the 
little man, but no more. [Cheers.] 

SILK STOCKINGS AGAINST HIM. 

Friends, we have against us also, I am sorry to say, 95 per cent of 
the respectable, amiable, silk-stocking vote. [Laughter.] 

And it is amusing to see how exactly the conditions now parallel 
the conditions 55 years ago, when Abraham Lincoln was making his 
fight for the Union and for freedom. 

After his defeat by Douglas in 1858, in November of that year, he 
wrote a letter to a friend, dating the letter at Springfield, 111. It's a 
letter I should like to have framed at this moment in every house in 
the Back Bay. [Laughter.] He said: 

In the late contest we had with us a considerable proportion of the plain Democracy, 
but we lost almost all the o]d silk stocking, exclusive Whigery. I do not mean that we 
lost all the Whigs, but only those of the nice, exclusive, silk-stocking type. [Laughter.] 

Now that was written by Abraham Lincoln 54 years ago, and it has 
just happened in your own city, and in mine, and in the country gen- 
erally at the present moment. 

In consequence, friends, we have against us the money; we have 
against us the politicians; we have against us every newspaper that 
can be reached or controlled [hisses] by the money power [cries of 
u right," and applause]; w« have against us the timid silk-stocking 
element — understand, not the silk-stocking man who feels competent 
to hold his own in the turmoil of actual life, not the silk-stocking man 
who is content to go out into the world and take his chances as any 
other man takes his. 

We have got that man with us. We have got that man with us. 
[Applause.] We have against us only the silk-stocking man who is 
not quite confident enough in himself to believe in himself, who is not 
quite confident enough in himself to believe that he can hold his own 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 7 

with the rest of his fellow-Americans without advantage on his part. 
[Applause.] 

\\e have these men that I have spoken of against us, and we have 
not got anybody with us except the people. [Great applause.] And 
on next Tuesday I want the people — I want you — to go to the polls 
and vote the same way you shout. [Cries of "you bet, you/' and 
applause.] 

In Massachusetts, as in Illinois, and as in most other States this 
year, it is such a contest in the civic field as you saw in the military 
field in 1775 and 1776. 

It is a contest between the Minute Men and the mercenaries. 
[App ause.] And I want to show that in civic life you are competent 
to do the work that your forefathers have done; done with honor in 
the past. [Applause.] 

LOWELL ; S PROPHECY. 

Now, friends, there has been an element of comedy to me in being 
held up in Massachusetts as an anarchistic agitator, when all that I 
have been doing has been to try to reduce to practice in the present 
day what the greatest men of Massachusetts have preached m past 
time. [Applause.] 

I have got here, and I am going to read to you, just a few lines 
from Lowell and then two lines from Emerson — Lowell's being writ- 
ten nearly 60 years ago and Emerson's 50 years ago. LowelPs run: 

New times demand new measures and new men; 

The old advances and in time outgrows 

The laws that in our fathers' day were best. 

And doubtless after us some purer scheme will be 

Shaped out by wiser men than we, 

Made wiser by the steady growth of truth. 

My soul is not a palace of the past, 

Where outworn creeds like Rome's great Senate quake, 

Hearing afar the vandals' trumpet hoarse 

That shakes old systems with a thunder fit. 

The time is ripe and rotten ripe for change. [Applause.] 

Then let it come ; I have no dread 

Of what is called for by the instinct of mankind. 

[Cries of "Good!"] 

Friends, that is what Lowell wrote in 1856. It is what we could 
put on our banners now in 1912. 

And I appeal to the Massachusetts of Lowell's time, to the Massa- 
chusetts that believed in the Bigelow papers, to the Massachusetts that 
sent young Lowell and Shaw, that sent Hallo well and so many of your 
people to the front in the Civil War. 

I appeal to that Massachusetts to stand loyal now to the memories 
of Massachusetts' great past. 

And now just wait — only two more fines of poetry. One of the 
curious traits of many of our good friends who are at the moment our 
opponents is that they are entirely willing to pay heed to the loftiest 
democratic sentiments if you will only keep them as sentiments and 
not try to reduce them to prose. 



8 ADDBESS OF HON. THEODORE BOOSEVELT. 

EMERSON AND THE PEOPLE. 

I think I could get every worthy citizen of the Back Bay who at 
present feels the deepest distrust of us to applaud with tepid decorum 
[laughter] the following two lines of Emerson, provided only that I 
merely read them, in the course of a lecture on Emerson, and did not 
ask to translate them into action. [Laughter and applause.] The 
lines are: 

For fishers and choppers and plowmen 
Shall constitute a State. 

He is describing the birth of Massachusetts, the birth of the United 
States,, and he describes this country as being foreordained through 
the ages to show the kings, the aristocracy, the powers of privilege in 
the Old World, that here in the Xew World we could have a true and 
real democracy, a democracy where fishers and choppers and plow- 
men constitute a State. [Applause and cheers.] 

As I say. friends, I could get decorous applause in any part of the 
Back Bay for that sentiment so long as I treated it purely as poetry 
of the past and not as politics of the present. [Applause.] 

"THE MOB" WHO EUT.E. 

But when I ask that the choppers, the plowmen, the fishers be given 
the absolute, the real control over their Government: when I ask 
that the farmers, the factory workers, the retail merchants, the young 
professional men. the railroad men. all the average citizens, be given 
the real control of this Government of theirs, be given the right to 
nominate their own candidates, be given the right to supervise the 
acts of all then servants — the min ute I do that. I am told that I am 
appealing to the momentary passion of the mob [laughter and ap- 
plause], that fishers and choppers and plowmen are all right in poetry 
but when I tiy to put them into politics they become a mob cursed 
with an inability to act except under the impulse of momentary pas- 
sion. [Laughter and applause.] 

Now, friends, in my life, according to the strength that has been 
given me. I have always striven measurably to realize every ideal I 
have ever possessed, and I hold with deepest conviction that there 
is nothing worse in any man than to profess a high ideal as a mere 
matter of intellectual pleasure and in practice to make no effort to 
realize that ideal. [Applause.] I hold that it is discreditable to us 
as a people, discreditable to you of Massachusetts, if you praise 
Emerson's and Lowell's lines in the abstract and fail to do your best 
to endeavor actually to realize them in the present. [Applause.] 

THE PEOPLE NO JUDGES. 

All I am trying to do is to practically put into effect now in Amer- 
ica, in 1912. the principles which your great leaders in Massachusetts, 
your great statesmen of the past, your great writers, your poets of 
the past, preached 30 and 50 and 70 years ago. [Applause.] That is 
all that I am trying to do. 

And. friends., I now wish to put before you just what I mean by 
one of my proposals which has attracted the most criticism, and the 
people will catch up with it in the end. 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 9 

In different parts of this Union, in different States, we have had very 
different qualities of public service. Nowhere have the differences 
been greater than in the judiciary. 

MASSACHUSETTS JUDGES GOOD. 

Here in Massachusetts you have had, I believe, a very unusually 
high quality of service from your judges. [Applause.] 

When I was President, one of the revolutionary things that I did, 
of which you have heard so much, was, without any precedent — to put 
on the Supreme Court of the Nation two judges from Massachusetts. 
[Applause.] 

It was revolution; it had never been done before, but I should not 
think that Massachusetts would attack me because of it. [Laughter 
and applause.] I put on those two men — one of them Mr. Moody, 
my Attorney General [applause], because I had become convinced 
from my association with him that he not only knew law but knew 
life [applause], and that he had a realization of the needs and of the 
ideals of the great majority of his fellow citizens, the men and women 
who go to make up the average of the citizenship of the United 
States. 

I put on Mr. Holmes, then chief justice here [applause], because 
studying his decisions I had grown to feel that he, too, sympathized 
with the American people, and, what was even more important, 
realized that the American people must decide for themselves, and 
not have anyone else decide for them, what their ideas of fundamental 
justice, as expressed in law, ought to be. [Applause.] 

THE BAY STATE EXAMPLE. 

And when I made my Columbus speech the State that I held up as 
an example to other States in the matter of the treatment of its 
judiciary was Massachusetts. [Applause.] Now, from reading the 
Massachusetts papers you would have thought that I was holding up 
the Massachusetts courts to obloquy. 

I was holding them up for imitation elsewhere and I was advocat- 
ing that in other States you should exercise the same type of super- 
vision over your courts as Massachusetts has exercised. 

But that was not all. I am dealing not with Massachusetts only; 
I am dealing with the 40 or 50 Commonwealths that go to make up 
this country as a whole. 

THE TRAITOR JUDGES. 

In some of these Commonwealths there have been put on the bench 
judges who have betrayed the interests of the people. ["Right ! "] 

If you doubt my words, you study the history of the cases in Cal- 
ifornia in which Frank Heney was engaged, you study the history of 
the cases in Missouri in which Folk and Hadley were engaged. * In 
those two States, gentlemen, I would have gone to any necessary 
length to take off the bench the judges who had betrayed the interests 
of justice and of the plain people. [Applause.] 

In certain other States, my own State of New York, the great State 
of Illinois, we were fronted with an entirelv different situation. In 



10 ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

those States, as far as I know, there was no trouble with the judges 
being corrupt. 

In New York I know that the court of appeals is composed of 
upright, well-meaning men. 

DO NOT KNOW VITAL NEEDS. 

But the courts in those States have been composed of men who 
know nothing whatever of the vital needs of the great bulk of their 
fellow Americans, and who, unlike your courts in Massachusetts, have 
endeavored to impose their own outworn philosophy of life upon the 
millions of their fellow citizens. 

Now, I want to give you certain examples, concrete cases of just 
what I mean, because I have always found that a concrete case ex- 
plains my position better than a general statement. 

Almost as soon as I left Harvard I went into the New York Legis- 
lature. And my education began. [Laughter.] Now, I did not 
come to my present position as a result of study in the library, in the 
closet. 

I came to my present position as the result of living in a world of 
men. It is because I have associated with them, I have worked with 
them, and I know my fellow Americans in many a different part of 
this Union and in all grades of life. [Applause.] I have worked with 
them. [Applause.] 

TO THE MEN OF THE WEST. 

Gentlemen, I am just going to give these one or two examples just 
to show you what I mean; that is all. For instance, I lived out West, 
in the cow country, quite a time, the short-grass country [laughter], 
and we would ship trainloads of cattle East. I and three or four other 
men who were going would go in the caboose at the end of the cattle 
train. 

If the train stopped we would jump out with our poles, and we would 
run up along the length of the cars to poke up the cattle that had lain 
down, because if we let them lie down the others would trample them 
to death. 

And usually about the time we got near the engine the train would 
start again. Then we would have to climb up on the first car and 
dance along back from car to car until we got to the last car and 
climb down to the caboose. 

KNOWS THE BRAKEMAN. 

Now, once or twice I had to perform that voyage in a late fall or 
early winter night with snow on the roofs of the cars and the wind 
blowing, and I was thoroughly contented when it was through. 

And now, friends, when a workman's-compensation act comes up 
and the question arises whether a brakeman, a switchman, any man 
of the kind should be compensated for the loss of life or limb in taking 
charge of the trains in which you and I travel in comfort in the Pull- 
man cars — when that comes up I think of my feelings when I jumped 
from car to car on the top of that cattle train, and when a miss or slip 
meant the loss of a leg or an arm or the loss of my life, and I know 
how the brakeman feels in such a case. [Applause.] 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 11 

THE JUDGES DON'T KNOW. 

Now in New York those worthy, well-meaning, elderly judges of 
the court of appeals have never had such an experience in their lives. 

They don't know. They don't visualize to themselves how that 
brakeman feels. They are not able to present to their minds the risks 
incident to the ordinary, everyday performance of his duties. 

They don't know the brakeman. They don't know what it is — 
I am speaking of a case I know — they don't know what it means 
when a brakeman loses both legs, and the following winter — I am 
speaking of a case I know, my own personal experience — the follow- 
ing winter his wife can't go out because she can't purchase shoes if 
she purchases shoes to send the children to school in. If they did 
vitualize those facts to themselves, I know that they would entirely 
alter the course of their judicial decisions. They don't understand 
what the facts of the case are. 

Now, this is simply as a preliminar}^, because I want you to know, 
to realize, that I have come to my present convictions as a result of 
having lived in the actual world of workaday men. I am not a senti- 
mentalist. [Great applause.] 

BELIEVES IN JUSTICE. 

I am not a sentimentalist. If there is one quality I dislike as much 
as hardness of heart it is softness of head. 

But I do believe in justice just as you believe in justice, and I am 
trying to get justice, and I am trying to get it for those who are less 
fortunate just as for those who are more fortunate. [Applause.] 

Just wait. I want to give you just four or five cases of laws which 
the courts of Illinois and New York have declared unconstitutional. 
When I went into the legislature 30 years ago in New York, I was put 
on a committee to investigate the manufacture of cigars in tenement 
houses. 

LIFE IN DESPAIR. 

I remember well of one of them coming upon a room about 14 feet — 
16 feet, perhaps — square, in which two families lived, one of them 
with a boarder. Those two families, men, women, and children, 
worked and lived, day in and day out, night in and night out, there, 
at the manufacture of tobacco into cigars. 

They lived in squalid filth, with the great sheets of tobacco in the 
bed clothing, under the beds, mixed up with stale food, put in the 
corners of the dirty room. 

We got a bill through to put a stop to that kind of work, and the 
court of appeals declared it unconstitutional. Friends, there was this 
gem in the opinion. 

The court said that it could not permit the legislature to interfere 
with the sanctity of home. [Laughter. A voice: "No home at all."] 

TAKES WORLD OF TIME. 

It was not home at all, as you say, that squalid 16-foot room where 
those families lived day in and day out and worked day in and day 
out; and yet the court forbade us to try and improve those conditions. 



12 ADDRESS OP HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

to try and make the conditions of tenement -house life so that it would 
be possible for decent men and decent women to live decently there 
and bring up their children as American citizens should be brought up. 

Friends, it is idle for any man to ask me to sit unmoved and without 
protest when a court makes a decision like that [cries of "Good" and 
applause], and it is a waste of time to tell me, as Mr. Taft did in his 
speech, that I am laying an impious hand on the ark of the covenant 
when I try to secure the reversal of such a decision. [Laughter and 
applause.] 

Now wait. I have only just begun. [Applause.] I am sorry for 
you, but I will get through as quick as lean. [Voices: "Go on, go 
on."] 

THE LAW THAT WAS PASSED. 

Then we passed a law providing that in factories there should be 
safeguards over all the dangerous machinery, and a girl working in a 
factory had her arm taken off above the elbow by an unprotected fly- 
wheel. She sued and recovered damages, and the court of appeals 
of the State of New York threw out her case, and there was another 
gem in their opinion. They said that they would not permit the 
legislature to interfere with the liberty of that girl to work amidst 
dangerous machinery. [Laughter.] 

Now you can see yourselves — you can look up. I will refer anyone 
who wants to look it up to the exact decisions where this language 
occurred. 

The liberty of that girl was protected by the court — the liberty; she 
had the liberty to starve or to work under the conditions offered her, 
and she had no other liberty. [Applause.] 

DREADFUL DENIAL OF JUSTICE. 

And I hold that it was a dreadful denial of justice to prevent that 
poor girl from recovering for the accident due to the criminal careless- 
ness of her employer, and I, for one, will never rest when there is a 
decision like that on the books until we have got it repealed. [ l ' Good ! 
Good!" and cheers.] 

I could give you 20 such cases. I will only give you 2 more — 
only 2 more. 

Then in the next case that came up that 1 refer to we passed a law, 
modeled on your Massachusetts law, a law forbidding women to be 
worked in factories more than 10 hours a day or after 9 o'clock at 
night. 

Friends, personally, I thought that was an utterly insufficient law. 
I felt that it did not go nearly far enough. Your Massachusetts law 
prohibits them from working more than 9 hours a day and after 6 
o'clock at night. 

Ours did not go as far. It was with reluctance that I could make 
myself accept it at all. I did simply because it was the best we could 
get at that time. 

At that time girls and women in factories, in sweatshops, were being 
worked 12, 14, sometimes 16 hours a day and until 10, 11, and 12 at 
night. 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 13 

THE COURT'S BARRIER. 

The Massachusetts court held that your law was constitutional ; but 
our law, which did not go as far, the Court of Appeals of the State of 
New York held as unconstitutional, and there was this further gem 
in the language — the court said that there had been altogether too 
much legislation of this kind in the United States and the time had 
come for the court fearlessly to oppose the barrier of its judgment 
against it. 

I love that word " fearlessly." [Prolonged cheering.] Those ami- 
able, well-meaning, excellently intentioned judges, who, doubtless, 
did not in their whole circle of acquaintances know one woman who 
was working in a factory or a sweatshop, said that they would stand 
" fearlessly" for what? 

" Fearlessly" for the right of the big factory owner and the small 
sweatshop owner to earn their money by working women, haggard, 
hour after hour, day after day, night after night, in the factory and 
sweatshop. 

Now, friends, do you know what my proposal is — this revolutionary 
proposal of mine [laughter], this proposal of mine that they say repre- 
sents socialism and anarchy ? 

FOR the 10,000,000.J 

My proposal is this: That in a case like that, the 10,000,000 people 
of the State of New York, to whom those 6 or 7 elderly, worthy, well- 
meaning men had said that they could not have justice — that those 
10,000,000 people, after a time amply sufficient in which to come to a 
sober judgment, should be permitted to vote for themselves as to 
whether the Constitution, which they themselves had made, had been 
correctly interpreted by your court here in Massachusetts and the 
Court of Appeals in the State of New York. [Prolonged cheering.] 

And if in a case like that the people are not intelligent enough to 
vote and say what they themselves meant when they made the Con- 
stitution, they are not intelligent enough to have made the Consti- 
tution in the first place. [Applause.] 

THE COMPENSATION ACT. 

One more case, only one more — two, perhaps. [Laughter.] We 
passed in New York a workmen's compensation act. 

The Supreme Court of the United States, interpreting exactly the 
same language in the Constitution of the United States as the court 
of appeals interpreted in the constitution of the State of New York, 
and in reference to a practically exactly similar bill, decided that that 
law was constitutional. 

The Court of Appeals of the State of New York decided that the 
Supreme Court of the United States was wrong [laughter] and that 
the law was not constitutional. 

Now, I want you to listen to this sentence, because I haven't seen 
this fact brought out by any man yet. 



14 ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



At this moment in the State of New York if a New York brakeman 
is injured on a train going straight through across New York, from 
Boston to Chicago, he has a right to recover, it is constitutional for 
for him to recover [laughter] for the injury. 

But if his brother is working on a trolley in the same city in which 
he is injured on the railroad train, or if he is working on a railway train 
that only goes from Albany to Buffalo, then it becomes unconstitu- 
tional for him to recover. [Laughter and applause.] 

ANARCHY OR JUSTICE. 

Friends, it is idle to tell me that I have not the right to protest 
that the United States Supreme Court was right and the court of 
appeals wrong [applause] ; and if I am an anarchist, I am an anarchist 
in company with the Supreme Court of the United States. [Applause 
and cheers.] 

All I ask is that, in that kind of a case, the ten millions of people of 
New York State shall not be balked of justice, but, after ample time 
for due deliberation on their part, shall be permitted to vote in this 
case whether the Supreme Court of the United States and the State 
courts of a dozen other States, like Iowa and Washington, are right, 
or whether the amiable elderly gentlemen of the New York Court of 
Appeals are right. 

I ask whether it be true that justice can not be given to the man 
crippled in industry in New York, although it can be given to him in 
the Nation, and in Iowa and in Washington, and in every civilized 
country abroad; whether it be true that the man can not have justice 
done him in New York, or whether we shall say to the judges of the 
Court of Appeals of New York, u No; we stand by the doctrines laid 
down by the Supreme Court of the Nation," and given utterance to 
by the Massachusetts judge, Mr. Justice Holmes, in the Oklahoma bank 
case. ' ' We say that the people have the right, in the exercise of the 
police power of the general- welfare clause of the Constitution" — I am 
using Mr. Holmes's words, not mine — "that the people have the right 
to decide such cases in accordance with the common standard of 
morality, with the preponderance opinion of the citizenship of the 
community, and that the courts have to respect such opinion as the 
popular opinion as to what morality demands." [Applause.] 

I hold that if it be true — if it be true — that in this country fishers 
and plowmen and choppers are to constitute a State, it must be true 
that they shall be permitted to impose their ideas of common justice, 
of common decency, upon their public servants, and that the public 
servants are in very fact the servants and not the masters of the com- 
munity. [Applause.] 

THE BATTLE FOR JUSTICE. 

Now, friends, I ask you of Massachusetts to stand in the front of the 
battle for justice and for righteousness as I have outlined. I wish that 
I could make the men who are best oif in the community — the big 
corporation men, the big bankers, merchants, railroad men — under- 
stand that in this fight for justice we ought to have the right to expect 
them to lead. 



ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 15 

FOR THE RIGHT. 

Surely, friends, surely men of Massachusetts, if we are true to the 
Massachusetts ideals of the past, we will expect those to whom much 
has been given to take the lead in striving to get justice for their 
fellows to whom less has been given. [Applause.] 

I want the men who are well off to give justice now because it is 
right, and not to wait till they have given justice simply because they 
fear longer to deny it. Justice! Let it come, because we believe in it. 
Let it not be forced upon us because we are afraid to deny it. 

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time, and the proper way to 
conserve all of the present system of our civilization that is best worth 
conserving is to alter that which causes a heavy strain to come upon 
the rest. 

I ask, at least, that we decline to commit ourselves to a policy of 
foolish Bourbonism; that instead of denying the need of any change 
in our laws, in our social and industrial system, to meet the changing 
needs of the times, we take the lead in making every change that is 
necessary in order to make our constitutions and the body of our law 
enacted under the Constitution instruments for justice as between 
man and man, instruments for getting justice for the average citizen- 
ship of the American Republic. [Applause.] 

Friends, now you have heard me to-night and you can judge for 
yourselves. Am I preaching anarchy? Am I preaching socialism? 
[Cries of " No/;] 

I am preaching elementary justice. 

MISSOURI AND MASSACHUSETTS. 

And now I ask you of Massachusetts to respond to the appeal con- 
tained in this telegram to me from Missouri, which says that the 
State convention of Missouri, representing the State, has refused all 
compromise and has sent a delegation to Chicago standing straight 
for me [great cheering] and for the cause that I represent. 

And I ask you people of Massachusetts, you men of Massachusetts, 
on next Tuesday to put yourselves beside Illinois and Pennsylvania 
and Maine in the lead of the movement. [Great applause.] 




















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